[hourislate]

I have not found one yet.

My son currently is enrolled in CS and his first 2 years of school are filled with humanities, history and a few more irrelevant courses all to keep some profs employed. His next two years will be filled with more useless courses and by the time it's all over will have cost 50k + (he lives at home and goes to a State School).

I feel like he could have taken a 6 week Java/Python/whatever and got more out of it. Add a CCNA/CCNP for the Networking knowledge, Linux Cert,Security Cert from SANS, and some self study and he would know more than a 4 year degree and be bettered prepared for the working world.

Universities in the US are all about making money, supporting football and athletics, tenure for the profs, and finally accreditation for 50k+?.

Meanwhile, 10's of 1000's of H1B's are needed because our kids know nothing and are being taught shit.

Two areas that need major change and disruption, Education and Healthcare, everything else can wait.

[anoonmoose]

I went to a state school. Their curriculum is easily and readily available online. It's nothing like what you describe. On top of that, you could have seen that and known it was the case before you sent him there. I'd really like to see the curriculum for the school you describe, I have a hard time believing it could be quite that different.

http://www.cse.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Selectio...

[NikolaNovak]

I understand some of your concerns, but at the same time, as you point out yourself, that's why there are choices available:

1. If you want a very specific skillset to do a very specific job, there are more opportunities and options today than ever before. Self-study, MOOC, bootcamps, certs, etc. Pros: fast, efficient, focused, practical, immediate. Cons: the specific/narrow focus may leave you with gaps you won't even be able to appreciate until too late.

2. If you want a more general education, Universities are there to provide. You'll get not just immediate hands-on-keyboard skills, but math and CS-theory background, and also also communication skills, discipline, diligence, social networking, perspective to be a team lead one day, etc.

Now, I do believe universities have a LOT of optimizations to make; a student's life tends to be sucky in many ways it doesn't need to. I've repeatedly found and heard of the difference in attitude between a college/bootcamp of "You're the paying customer, we'll provide knowledge", and university attitude of "you are irrelevant, be grateful, and jump through the hoops jump for the privilege" - whether from the ever-increasing admin/bureaucracy cohort (sometimes helpful, often power-blinded), the obscure rules and difficult processes, or some of the tenured professors. But again, the information is out there, the choices are available - and overall there's never ever been a better and easier time to acquire knowledge.

[Loughla]

>humanities, history and a few more irrelevant courses all to keep some profs employed

Full transparency, I hear this from nearly every 1st year college student every fall semester - either the CS, CHEM, or Engineering students exclusively. "Why do I have to take English, I'm just going to work with [chemicals] [computers] [software] [roads] [whatever else]"

Not sure how this opinion will fly on this site, but I'm not sure what you expected. It sounds like you have an ax to grind with a specific institution and you needed to do more research about the system of universities overall. They were and are designed to make a modern version of a renaissance wo/man - good or knowledgeable about everything being the idea. Making citizens who are more than just 1 skill cogs. Teaching critical thinking and higher order thought processing. They were not, and are not job placement agencies.

If you were looking for nothing but the certs and technical skills, you should've sent him to a technical/trade school or community college. That's why those exist.

There is a massive difference between being job task ready - like just finishing the certs would make you. And being life ready - like a liberal education makes you in theory. Giving a student a liberal education is literally why universities were designed. Why was that a surprise?

I genuinely don't understand why being good at things that are outside of your expertise, or at least knowing enough about them to sound like an educated person in conversation, is 'irrelevant'. I don't get it and never have.

>Meanwhile, 10's of 1000's of H1B's are needed because our kids know nothing and are being taught shit.

My experience has taught me that whenever an employer says "we can't find the workers" and use H1B's, what they really mean is "we can't find the workers at the wage we're willing to pay". Those are two different things.

THAT BEING SAID, the costs of education are out of hand. Living inside the beast, I can tell you that many administrators are just flat blind to the storm coming.

In the 90's, the message was go to college, go to college, go to college - relying on the past 40 years of if you went to college, everything else just sort of fell into place.

Well, now we have so many 'extra' services students expect, so many expenses, and less state/federal dollars. So students pay for it.

NOW the message is that you need to go to college only if it furthers your career goals. They're working in kindergarten with my child on that. It's frightening, honestly.

I think the pendulum will swing the other direction and we'll see a glut of skilled trades-people in the next 10 years.

[dragonwriter]

> My son currently is enrolled in CS and his first 2 years of school are filled with humanities, history and a few more irrelevant courses all to keep some profs employed.

I suspect, if you aren't just being hyperbolic, you mean, “because he chose to a seek a degree from a liberal arts institution rather than an engineering one (which would have some, but less, general ed) or a vocational certificate program or career-focussed bootcamp.”

[gotorazor]

I think that is precisely the opposite of what the original article was talking about.

@forrestbrazeal is implying that many of those certs are going to be obsolete really soon. At least, that is what I took from the article.

I agree that American Universities are kind of insane. We, Canadians, are looking in and shaking our heads.

[normal_man]

> My son currently is enrolled in CS and his first 2 years of school are filled with humanities, history and a few more irrelevant courses

Yeah god forbid he enrich his mind and develop lateral thinking skills, empathy, perspective and wisdom instead of focusing exclusively on how he can best serve capital.

[zozbot123]

Who says he shouldn't be doing these things? That's what secondary education is for, in most of the developed world. Apparently, college is the new high school - in a quite literal sense!

[normal_man]

OP, the guy I'm replying to, seems to be saying that? That's why I replied to him?